Calradia
Calradia is the setting of the first two Mount&Blade games and the prequel, Bannerlord. There are five factions in the original Mount&Blade and six in Mount&Blade: Warband, each with a ruler, a claimant, twenty vassals and a collection of fiefs that make up each faction's region. The land of Calradia is neither static nor affected only by the player's actions. Each faction is free to wage war, form alliances, or sign peace treaties with other factions. Nobles and kings lead their war parties across Calradia, attending tournaments, feasts, and collecting taxes from fiefs entrusted to them. During times of war, they plunder enemy villages, attack opposing armies in the field, and seek to conquer castles and towns through siege warfare. Law and order are the exception, rather than the rule, in Calradia. Deserters and bandits of all sorts harass trade routes and attack villagers whilst evading attacks from bands of manhunters seeking the bounties on their heads. Farmers traveling to market to sell their harvest and caravans traveling from town to town trading goods must fend off looters and thieves seeking to reap what they did not sow. Lords are also threatened by the chaos; fiefs regularly change hands during wartime. Even the kings of each faction are not safe. Claimants to the throne travel across the land, seeking brave and adventurous allies to back their claims and launch civil wars. Calradia roughly means "ruled by the council" in old Slavic languages. Geography Calradia in Mount&Blade The land of Calradia resembles a continental terrain bordered by a mountain chain to the south and a snow plain to the east. It holds eight rivers, two that end in deltas, three dozen forests of varying sizes, and one lake. The earth is predominantly green except in the steppes, where it appears to be drier, and in the snow field, where it is covered with snow. Calradia in Warband Due to the fact that a new faction was added (Sarranid Sultanate) and there was no place to squeeze in the kingdom, the Warband map is completely redesigned from the vanilla map. Most notable is the addition of a southern desert, while still bearing similar climatic zones such as steppes and tundra. The new map turns Calradia more into a rounded peninsula, akin in a few ways to Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings. Converting the map from a square to a more ball-shaped landmass has the advantage of making fewer parts of the map isolated and awkwardly detached, as areas like around Aldelen, Tulbuk, and Tebandra were in the original map. Calradia in Bannerlord Bannerlord's Calradia is somewhat similar to the general layout from Warband, but takes place around 200 years earlier. It covers a larger area and has more mountains to create choke points. History The true history of Calradia is quite vague. The only characters whose lives are described in any detail are monarchs, claimants, and heroes. However, it is implied that the factions have been at war for a very long time, and that the player is the only person who has any chance of bringing about peace. An ancient Calrad (or sometimes Calradic) Empire is frequently mentioned by the various heroes as predating all of the kingdoms. Matheld speaks of how the first Nords to arrive in Calradia were hired to man the Empire's galleys, for instance. Lezalit says that the Empire utilized all of the fighting styles represented in its empire, but that eventually "the tribes" destroyed the Empire. The fourth game in the series, and third canonical, Bannerlord, will feature the Calradic Empire shortly before its fall. Other companions speak of how Praven was the largest city under the Empire, and of the Imperial heritage that suffuses the region around Suno. Overall, very little of its actual history is ever revealed, but it is obvious that the Calrad Empire fell apart and was split into several kingdoms. Outside of Calradia It is apparent that there are other nations and realms in the Mount&Blade world. Examples include the County of Geroia, from which Lezalit claims his noble lineage as the Count's second son, and Marnid reveals as his place of origin; and Balion, a realm beyond Calradia's western coast, far over the sea described in the profile of Konrad, a Custom Battle character. There is also land called Jumne (or Nordland) to the north of Calradia, where the Kingdom of Nords claim their roots lie. There is also another place named Lokti, which is only mentioned once in Argo Sendnar's description. The player character is also described as a foreigner, and many heroes speak of leaving their homelands to seek their destiny in Calradia. ru: Кальрадия Category:Locations